For 10 years starting in 2007 I was either chairman or vice chairman of the United States Senate Ethics Committee, the only committee of the Senate equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. I can tell you without hesitation, that it is against the rules to ask your staff to carry your clean clothes out of the cleaner, let alone ask them to carry your child! Yet a congressman from Arizona quit for doing just that.

It is certainly also against congressional rules for a member of Congress to discuss sexual fantasies about a staffer to either that staffer or others in the office. But a congressman from Texas did just that and taxpayers paid tens of thousands of dollars to cover it up.

Going to a staff meeting in your underwear? A Michigan congressman did that.

Sadly, I could go on. Groping, grabbing, treating people with disrespect, as objects, as if they exist to make you feel powerful. That is what our country is dealing with today. It is a moment. A moment where powerful segments of the private sector are setting the standard of zero tolerance and the United States government must do the same.

As we say goodbye to the chaos of 2017 and its seemingly never-ending turmoil about...well everything...I believe it is possible, maybe even probable, that we will see 2018 turn into another Year of the Woman.

I was part of the last one in 1992, when Dianne Feinstein and I became the first two female senators elected from any state, and when America chose to elect more women to the House and Senate. That year, we women tripled our numbers in the Senate. Worthy of note: Yes, we tripled our numbers but we only went from two to six women out of 100 senators!

Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman was an over-statement and after much hype everyone focused on other things.

But the Year of the Woman was historic, as small as it was. It came about because Professor Anita Hill had the courage to go public with her story of humiliation and verbal abuse at the hands of her boss, Clarence Thomas. Many people believed Professor Hill but many did not. And senators on the Judiciary Committee, from both sides of the aisle, treated her with disrespect and prohibited three other women who would have corroborated Anita's story, from testifying.

I blame myself for being out of the loop on this. I was in the House of Representatives then and was running for the Senate and I cared deeply about Professor Hill. I fervently believed her and, just as fervently, I believed in the fairness of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I was wrong about that committee. I had marched up the Capitol steps with several other women colleagues from the House to demand that Hill be heard. She was heard and in many ways abused by the committee and then they shut the hearing down before justice could be served.

But after Anita Hill, I and many other women, shared our stories of harassment and it was important. We passed some improvements in sexual harassment laws, but for the most part, the moment was lost. It can't be lost again.

All of the “moments” in the fight for equality, justice and dignity for women, started with the suffragettes. Most people don't think much about them but, for all of us, regardless of gender, it is critical to know that the suffragettes were remarkable. In 1913, some 8,000 suffragettes marched in Washington, D.C., to the taunts of thousands of men. They were attacked, with 100 women being hospitalized.

Their march came out of frustration because the women had been fighting for the right to vote since the 1840s and they had been promised by President Woodrow Wilson that he would back them. He didn't. He tried to put them off. He said World War I was more important and women would have to wait. But the suffragettes wouldn't give up. They told Wilson and the Congress that it was their sons who would be sent to war and they viewed the war as yet another reason for the right to vote.

They were jailed by the Wilson administration, went on a hunger strike and were force fed. After that tough tactic, the public took note and the women prevailed. In 1920, nine years after my mother was born, women finally got the right to vote in national elections.

The reason I share the story of the right to vote struggle, is to emphasize what a massive struggle it has been for women to be considered equal ... not to be seen as dumb, or inferior, or not worthy, or as an object for someone's pleasure. And I view what we are going through now, as painful as it is for our country, as another chapter in this struggle. Further, if we truly see this moment through, it will make life in our nation much better. I strongly believe our nation will become, as our founders predicted, a “more perfect union.”

We must step up even though some people we like have to step down.

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Sen. Barbara Boxer talks about the her daughter Nicole Boxer's film, "How I Got Over," before it was screened on Jan. 5, 2014, at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Crystal Chatham/The Desert Sun(Photo: Crystal Chatham/The Desert Sun)

When I got to the House of Representatives in 1983, my first assignment was to help pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. What a simple and elegant amendment it was: “Equality under the law, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state, on account of sex.”

We failed by a handful of votes. I firmly believe that the ERA would have given women a constitutional right to be treated equally and protected under the law and nobody would have dared treat us as lesser beings. The ERA is unfinished business that should be finished.

It is no secret that the stories we are hearing every day about abuse (there are a few about women abusing power, too) are about power; power over another human being. It's the powerful who prey on the less powerful, knowing full well that the less powerful will not talk, will not complain, will not do anything for fear of being treated worse; for fear of losing a needed job or promotion; for fear of failing a class or not graduating; fear, fear, fear. Of being scorned, being alone. Put on a blacklist.

Well, the powerless are talking. And we must listen. And we must appreciate their courage. They don't benefit from these stories. They risk retaliation. Still. Whether they work in government, in the press room or in the corporate world.

I thought the 1991 Anita Hill moment would change things for women. It didn't. Yes, laws were passed but women were too scared to use them. I then thought the 1995 Sen. Bob Packwood moment would change things for women when the longtime senator resigned in disgrace as more than 20 women spoke up about his abuse. Yes, a new system in Congress was set up but, as we are learning, that system was flawed, allowing private settlements with a slush fund and no real justice.

I thought the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment moment would send a strong message of change. He was only the second President to be impeached, and the painful, public humiliation of a sex scandal would send the signal that even the most powerful must pay a heavy price. Well, that didn't work either as we now have a president who was certainly not dissuaded from running for the highest office in the land after admitting his pleasure at grabbing and groping.

So why am I hopeful that this time may be different? Because it feels different. Mainly because the majority of Americans believe the victims. The Senate race in Alabama where Democrats, Republicans and independent voters said no to an accused molester sent shockwaves through the body politic. The firing of many private sector powerful men in the news and entertainment industries is more proof. The resignation of politicians is even more proof.

But there is so much more under the surface as we look at other areas where workers are so very powerless; like the hospitality industry and other industries where there is a predominantly immigrant workforce. This will take time and we must not turn away because without a doubt, it is tempting to do that.

It is time to end this epidemic that has been hurting people for far too long.

We can do this. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1963: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Yes, these are times of challenge and controversy and so for all of us who are up to it, we have miles to go before we sleep.

I am working so that 2018 will be the next year of the woman. We should elect qualified and effective women to all levels of government. And we should elect men who put this issue front and center. Men are critical to this battle. We women can't do it without them. They have moms, sisters, and daughters. They have a heart and soul in this, too.

But there is more to another Year of the Woman than even the electoral side. This Year of the Woman should also be about a sea change in our society when it comes to any kind of abusive behavior. We are all God's children and nobody — nobody — should be discriminated against for any reason.

Abuse of power knows no political party. It knows no particular industry. It hurts. It robs confidence. It leaves scars. It costs society. It needs to go away. Finally. At last.

Barbara Boxer served as a U.S. senator from California from 1993 to 2017. She is the Founder of PAC for a Change which backs candidates for the U.S. House and Senate. Information at barbaraboxer.com